Elgan speaks
...and her words thunder across the land

Toot, tootling away.

Thursday, Jan. 17, 2008
8:05 p.m.
Remember in elementary school they made your parents buy you a plastic recorder in order to torture the teacher and give the students a blunt object with which to pummel each other? I remember having to purchase said “musical” instrument for my kids. They didn’t really learn anything to do with music. But I digress. No, actually, I don’t digress.

When I was in elementary school, I also obtained a recorder, a wooden one, mind you (this was the era before plastics, or B.P. as it is often referred to), which was taught to us by the little Yemenite man who was also hired to teach us prayers. I think I’d better go off on another tangent here to explain.

I went to a secular Hebrew day school, unlike my best friend zitagsd who went to the religious Hebrew school across the street (the attendees of which my mother nicknamed “the Jewish Catholics”). Because it was a secular school, we were not force fed religion. We read the Hebrew Bible as though it were a book of literature. But it was recognized that at some point we would probably find ourselves in a house of worship, and would need to be able to follow the service. Twice a week Mr. M’gori (that is probably not how his name was spelled, but it sounded like that) would come in and write the prayers on the blackboard, which we dutifully copied down, and teach us the tunes associated with them. I still remember those songs.

Anyway, Mr. M’gori was also engaged to teach us how to play the recorder. I remember staring at a page of sheet music covered with B naturals and having to play them, quarter-note after quarter-note. I think he really did attempt to give us a musical education. Well, finding playing on one note to be rather tedious, I figured out how the instrument worked on my own and proceeded to teach myself different songs by ear, mostly Israeli folk tunes. One day I showed him what I had figured out, and he was fascinated.

I didn’t really play the recorder again until I was in my very late teens when I was hanging out with my first fiancé (which is another story I may already have told here, I can’t remember) and got involved in the whole early music scene that he belonged to. We started a recorder quartet and I actually began reading music for the instrument instead of my previous by-ear method. I had a not-unpleasant sound, and I could do a few things musically.

Fast forward to the 21st century, i.e. THE PRESENT. I find myself suddenly appointed the coach of a recorder ensemble, part of the chamber music course, because I expressed an interest in playing the instrument again. I am supposed to coordinate a meeting time for the three music students involved and we were supposed to have met already and read through some music so as to have something available to play for the actual professor running the course, i.e. my husband. I finally got an email from one of them (he also happens to be one of my husband’s classical guitar students) with his schedule, and I can always get the other guy’s (this is Ollie, my daughter’s friend and my Latin buddy), but the girl (who is also the first guy’s girlfriend) hasn’t contacted me yet. It just seems like too much for little ol’ me to undertake, especially as I really wonder how qualified I am.



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